The story begins with a girl named Ai. She is the central character within this entire series. She receives the most screentime out of any other character and the plot comfortably revolves around her innocent sense of justice. She lives in a small town comprised of people whom she's been around her entire life. Unaware to her knowledge, however, is the fact that everyone around her is already dead, and it is her responsibility to give them all a proper death by burying them. Why does the responsibility rely on her? Because she is a graveskeeper: a being created (somehow) after God's disappearance with the purpose of burying the immortal dead in order to legitimately put them to death. But the surprises don't end there. In comes a mysterious man who runs rampant, "killing" every member of Ai's town in a blind rampage of bloodshed and dismemberment. Why is this man killing everyone? And why now? This is one of many struggles that Ai has to deal with in this series.
What Kamisama tries to do quickly and early is establish character depth. To give reason behind the characters' actions and why they choose to believe that reasoning. This occurs with almost every character that appears at some point throughout the series. What Kamisama does differently from others, however, is discard the characters as soon as it feels that the character has been properly developed. While this isn't necessarily a problem, Kamisama is faced with an age-old problem that many other anime have dealt with in the past: time. As you will probably recall as you read this, Kamisama is only a one-cour series. In the course of the series, an estimated fifteen to twenty characters come and go throughout the twelve episodes in this series. How many of these characters are given attempted development? Nearly all of them, in a twelve episode series. How the series believes it can give a proper amount of character development to so many new characters episode after episode is bizarre, to say the least. And when a series doesn't give a character enough development, that character becomes both unlikable and forgettable. This is the case for almost all characters in the series as along with the innumerable amount of characters, the series also gives off an uneven distribution of character attention. Ai gets more screentime than any other character in the series, and it shows, as she's the most identifiable character in the entire series. But whether this makes her realistic is a different story altogether.
With any series that involves a deity of any sort, Kamisama has its share of inconsistencies with miraculous events. Within the series, it is evident that even without a God in place, unrealistic events continue to happen. Perhaps this is due to God controlling the flow of logic within the world, but that, sadly, is never explored. And among these unrealistic feats is another age-old cliche that many other past anime have experimented with: wishing. If one wishes for something "hard enough," their wish has a good chance of coming true. Kamisama uses this as plot convenience for the most part, while at other points it becomes the center of the plot itself. What it doesn't do is explain itself. If God does not exist, how can people grant wishes? Who controls the wishes? The only being capable of doing so would be God itself, but It had abandoned the world as previously stated, so what becomes of this? This also ties in with my theory that God controls the logic within the world, but is never developed any further. Inconsistencies also occur as the characters begin to receive any sort of development. A certain trend that this series likes to take is to have the central character, Ai, give a new, innocent perspective to the horrid, cruel world around her to the characters involved in internal conflict. They take the words of a twelve year-old to heart and convert their ideals to match the more optimistic ideals that she comes up with. Perhaps the series is trying to convey a moral of looking at pessimism with optimism. To take a world without God and view it as a world of extra opportunities at living life. If it means wishing for anything you want, that world is soon to be corrupted regardless.
As stated above, there are many characters that appear throughout this series, while only a few stay around for the entire series. These rare characters include Ai, Yuri, and Scar. Ai, again, is the central character, and the entire plot revolves around her and her carefree look on life and impenetrable sense of justice. Her development as a character is the most solid of any other character in the series and she becomes the driving force behind most of the resolutions to conflicts that arise within Kamisama. While her development is compact, her likability is a bit shaky. She's likable to the point that she's a cute, innocent child, but that's really all there is to her. She has her own idea of "profound beliefs," but they're hard to take seriously from a child who has been isolated from the outside world her entire life. Combine that with a personality with no visible flaws and you have the reincarnation of God itself. Yuri is a character who is introduced with a dark background. His family had died since God's disappearance and had been wandering around alone before meeting Ai and Scar. He receives some necessary screentime upon his introduction, but the attention on him declines as the series continues. His role eventually becomes "The Father" of the group, which only leaves him enough screentime to remind the viewer that he exists. Scar is a graveskeeper like Ai, but unlike Ai, is devoid of any extraordinary personality. She's calm and collected all the time. Her role in the series is very similar to Yuri's as she becomes more of "The Mother" to Ai as the series continues. As is typical, her character is quickly discarded in order to better develop Ai's character. All other characters who's names I will not mention for convenience sake are either given very little development or are only relevant for a few episodes. Another example of how the series likes to play favorites.
One of the things that initially brought my attention to Kamisama was the creamy colors. By that, I mean when the colors of a bold source of light blends in with the characters' expressions or movements that cause them to have unrealistic or bolder facial expressions and shadow features. This type of animation isn't seen much in this current generation and could be considered somewhat avant-garde to new fans of animation. One thing Kamisama does right is make the characters look pretty. The eyes are bold and flashy, and the character design is unlike many seen in any recent anime series. In terms of character animation, I have no complaints. The characters looked okay and they moved okay, despite a certain character's hair color blending into the vivid view of the sunset.
It's easy to believe that a fantasy anime would use fantasy elements to help progress a plot in the right direction. What makes this controversial, however, is the decision and logic behind it. What makes the disappearance of God so impactful in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi? After a few episodes, viewers tend to forget that the world is without God, as the series makes little mention of it whenever something goes haywire. The biggest factor in determining the validity of this series is its loyalty to its original purpose: to provide a world that is ruined without God and how the outlook of a single girl can change the views of the people she meets with a single outburst. What makes this world ruined by God's abandonment of the Earth? The viewer is left unsure. The idea that one should look at pessimism with optimism is again apparent with this, but is the world truly pessimistic? Having your wishes granted and being immortal could be a true paradise to some, if not many across the world. What God has accomplished by abandoning the world is never revealed, nor does it provide any sort of clue as to how it accomplishes anything. The only conclusion I can come to after watching this series is that the world can survive without God. All it needs is a mascot to cheer up the denizens among it. In this case, it's a little girl named Ai. May the world rest in peace.
